Leaders Across the Caribbean Consider Easing Laws on Marijuana, Which Could Be Region's Cash Crop

DARK VIEW FALLS, St. Vincent - Deep-green marijuana plants grow along roadsides, in front yards and on plantations hidden in the mountainous interior of this lush island - and the spliff bar is a stone's throw from the police station.

Inside the camouflaged business, a group of men smoke $1.15 joints between sips of beer while inviting visitors, with a slight smile and raised chin, to take a hit. In a back room, two men share a joint as they stuff cured cannabis into tiny plastic bags.

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DARK VIEW FALLS, St. Vincent - Deep-green marijuana plants grow along roadsides, in front yards and on plantations hidden in the mountainous interior of this lush island - and the spliff bar is just a stone's throw from the police station.

Inside the camouflaged business, a group of men smoke $1.15 joints between sips of beer while inviting visitors, with a slight smile and raised chin, to take a hit. Steps away in a back room, two men share a joint as they stuff cured cannabis into tiny plastic bags.

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UNITED NATIONS (CMC) -- An independent monitoring body for the implementation of the United Nations international drug control conventions says the Caribbean continues to be used as a transit area for the large-scale smuggling of illicit drugs.

In its annual report, issued here on Wednesday, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said this is the case because of the region's geographical location -- at the crossroads of the main producing countries and the consumer markets.

"The region's long coastlines, porous borders and limited law enforcement and institutional capacity have facilitated trafficking activities, further compounding the impact of drug-related crime," the report said.

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Stone Age humans could well have deserved the name. Scientists have found the drug paraphernalia used by prehistoric humans to cook up herbal mixtures to get themselves high.

Scientists have long suspected that humans have an ancient history of drug use but much of the evidence has been indirect, ranging from the bizarre images found in prehistoric cave art to the discovery of hemp seeds in excavations.

Now, however, researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to South American tribes.

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Prince's Helicopter Opens Fire on Cocaine Smugglers' Speedboat

Prince William was involved in a second dramatic drugs raid in the Caribbean, when a helicopter he was in opened fire on a boat of suspected cocaine smugglers.

He was on board a Lynx helicopter as it chased a speedboat suspected of shipping cocaine from South America.

When the boat tried to flee, Royal Marines on the helicopter shot at it, forcing the crew of three to jump into the sea.

The men were pulled aboard HMS Iron Duke, the frigate on which the Prince is spending time as part of a two-month secondment aimed at preparing him for his future role as head of the Armed Forces.

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PRINCE William has been involved in a second drugs raid in the Caribbean since his naval training in the Westcountry.

The Prince, who prepared for sea at Dartmouth's Britannia Royal Naval College, was on board a Lynx helicopter as it chased a speedboat suspected of shipping cocaine from South America.

Gunners on the helicopter shot at the vessel's engine, which caught fire, and three men jumped into the sea. They were recovered and taken aboard HMS Iron Duke, on which Prince William is spending time as part of a two-month secondment in preparation for his future role as head of the armed forces.

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SANTO DOMINGO.-Interim U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic Roland Bullen says since drug trafficking is a problem that affects the entire Caribbean, Dominican and Haitians must fight it jointly.

Speaking at the opening of today's anti-kidnapping course at Police headquarters, Bullen said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has also pledged its support and says law enforcement officials must work fast to mitigate trafficking and related crimes.

Bullen said the anti-kidnapping course, with 16 Haitian and 20 Dominican officials taking part, was a good example of the cooperation between the two nations.

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Drug Trafficking Exacts Social, Economic Toll, World Bank Reports

KINGSTON, Jamaica -- Economists investigating the impact of crime in the developing world are yielding some harsh findings.

The social and economic costs are growing and are compounded with each generation, feeding further cycles of violence.

And America's closest neighbors have it worst, the World Bank says. A report to be released by the bank today says Jamaica is emerging as the murder capital of the Americas, while the Caribbean region now ranks as the world's most crime-ridden area, excluding places torn by civil war. Hijacking, burglary, kidnapping and rape are also on the rise, as a result of the region's role in the global drug trade.

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While eight per cent of the globally intercepted cocaine was seized in Central America and the Caribbean during 2004, an international drug agency is reporting a decrease in trafficking in the area.

This is according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which issued its 2006 World Drug Report yesterday on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. The agency found that the importance of the Caribbean area as a trans-shipment point to the United States was decreasing.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The cargo ship looked like any other cutting its ways across the Caribbean, but stashed in hidden compartments was nearly 4 tons of cocaine.

The bust by U.S. and British officials this summer _ one of the largest this year _ illustrated the vast amounts of drugs still crossing the Caribbean and destined for the United States and Europe.

"For every vessel we seize, there might be 20 vessels that get in," said Lt. Luis Rodriguez, of the U.S. Coast Guard in Puerto Rico.

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WILLEMSTAD With its remote beaches, tourist traffic and ties to Europe, this palm-fringed Dutch corner of the Caribbean is a paradise, for drug traffickers.

The trade has brought a new surge of violence as cartels from nearby Colombia move in to ship cocaine to Europe, mainly to Netherlands.

"These organizations are moving and they're moving along with their violence, their ways of enforcing the business," said Waldo Santiago, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in the Caribbean.

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MIAMI (Reuters) - Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic are major Caribbean transit routes for South American drugs headed for the United States, while Haiti is a key conduit plagued by corruption, according to the annual U.S. report on the global drug trade released on Saturday.

South American narcotics also move to a lesser degree through Trinidad and Tobago, the Dutch Antilles, Cuba and the tiny islands dotting the eastern rim of the Caribbean Sea, a law enforcement nightmare with thousands of islands.

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PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten - Curacao-based Dutch Caribbean Airline will begin screening passengers before they buy tickets in an effort to stop drug smuggling on flights to the Netherlands, the justice minister said.

The agreement signed Friday by Antillean Justice Minister Rutsel Martha and Dutch Caribbean chief executive officer Mario Evertsz, lets the airline prohibit passengers from buying a ticket who have previous drug trafficking convictions or are otherwise considered suspicious by Antillean authorities.

It goes a step further than an April arrangement between KLM and the Antillean government, which screens people just before boarding.

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What France called one of its biggest cocaine seizures on record, officers in the French Caribbean seized 2 tons of cocaine from a Venezuelan fishing trawler.

French Navy ships and surveillance aircraft had tracked the trawler for six days, said Michel Cadot, the top French official on Martinique.

With Venezuela's approval, French officers boarded the boat, Cadot said. The cocaine was discovered in about 60 bags within welded panels in the boat's bow. The eight crew members were detained, Cadot said, and would be turned over to Venezuela after being processed on Martinique.

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The Dutch Parliament has endorsed a treaty allowing United States aircraft to use Dutch bases in the Caribbean as staging areas to fight drug trafficking. The treaty allows American aircraft to use bases on Aruba and Curacao while making surveillance flights in Latin America. (AP)

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Reports Of Higher Numbers Meant More Funding For The Branch

WASHINGTON -- The Drug Enforcement Administration's Caribbean office routinely falsified its claims of drug arrests and seizures for at least three years, according to five present or former agents who worked there.

Agents in the DEA's office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, claimed credit for hundreds of arrests that were in fact made by local police, the agents said.

``It got so bad,'' said the former supervisor, ``that agents were checking the newspapers every day to see who was arrested so they could go get the information and transfer it onto DEA arrest cards.''

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WASHINGTON -- The Drug Enforcement Administration's Caribbean office routinely falsified its claims of drug arrests and seizures for at least three years, according to five present and former agents who worked there.

Agents in the DEA's office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, claimed credit for hundreds of arrests that were in fact made by local police, the agents told Knight Ridder. A former supervisor estimated that 70 percent of the arrests the DEA claimed from 1998 through 2000 were phony.

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KINGSTON, Jamaica -- Gangs fight violent turf wars in Jamaica's tough inner cities. Members of an anti-Roman Catholic cult hack and torch worshipers in a St. Lucia church with machetes, killing a nun.

A 17-year-old girl who breaks into a neighbor's home in Trinidad and Tobago has her hand chopped off. In Tortola, four Americans are accused of murdering a visiting American artist.

Off the coasts of Haiti, Jamaica and other islands, South American drug cartels salt the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea with packets of cocaine and marijuana to lure villagers to the lucrative spoils of the drug trade.

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CARIBBEAN - Caribbean authorities say they are hampered by limited resources as they try to stem the drug flow that accounts for an estimated one-third of United States-bound cocaine shipments.

Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Haiti were named as major transshipment centers in a U.S. State Department report last week. Eastern islands--including St. Kitts and St. Lucia--were increasingly being used by traffickers, the report said.

"We have tried hard to stop cocaine from entering or leaving," Jamaica National Police spokesman Sgt. Jubert Llewellyn said Friday. "Frankly, intelligence is where we have been hurt by a lack of resources."

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Caribbean authorities said Friday they are hampered by limited resources as they try to stem the drug flow that accounts for an estimated one-third of U.S.-bound cocaine shipments.

Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Haiti were named as major transshipment centers in a U.S. State Department report released last week. Eastern islands -- including St. Kitts and St. Lucia -- were increasingly being used by traffickers, the report said.

"We have tried hard to stop cocaine from entering or leaving," Jamaica National Police spokesman Sgt. Jubert Llewellyn said. "Frankly, intelligence is where we have been hurt by a lack of resources. We want to take out the drug trafficking heads, and that takes money."

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